Yes, It Has been A LONG Time

SHIP'S LOG:

Yes, it has but what the heck, summer is for relaxin' and enjoyin' the beautiful weather and the heck with everything else.

Over the course of time since last I filled this spot, I have done some sailing . . . at least when the weather permitted such. Sunshine doesn't always bring with it good winds and favorable tides. There were several days when the air just hung heavy and in place. No movement at lass, not a breathe. Even people with out and out racing boats found themselves without enough wind to buck the tide. When Bobby Cullen can't make a boat go where he wants it to go, you just know that it ain't a good day for sailin'!

Then of course there is the opposite of such weather, too much wind and no rain, but a hell-of-a lot of rain!Last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday qualified as days of real "street cleaning" storms. Dinghies on the dinghy dock filled with water. It was a good thing that all of them had positive floatation as it was certainly true that all would have gone deep by Wednesday. AND THAT IS A LOT OF RAIN!

And then the fever struck TYC. And unfortunately, I succumbed. well, not me actually, ABISHAG. Firts it struck Ron Reinhart;'s boat, then it struck Rich Webber's boat, and then it struck ABISHAG! The dreaded "ALTERNATOR CONTAGION!" For whatever reason, in the course of a couple of days, the alternators on all of our boat packed it up and went south. I even heard mine go! I was charging the batteries Thursday night. The engine was idling happily when the pitch changed. I took notice of it right away but couldn't figure out exactly what it was until I noticed that the little meter which recorded the charging efficiency of the engine, while indicating a charge, didn't indicate much of one. Usually, it will be in the high 13 volt range, even up and over 14 if the battery banks are low, but then it settles down in the low to mid 13's and tops off, regulated by the regulator( an appropriate name don't you think?) But after the pitch change, the charging was only 12.4 volts and that's really not enough of a charge to actually charge the battery. I knew that something was wrong but not what. I hoped for a loose belt but feared more.

Late Friday afternoon brought Fred, Fred of puke-in-the bucket-off-New-Jersey Fame, who is a wiz at all things mechanical and electrical, well at least he knows more than me. It took us(read him) only a few minutes to discover that the alternator was putting out only 12.4 - .3 - .2 volts at its terminals which indicated that further investigation was rather unwarranted. If there was such low voltage being generated at the source, anything else along the line was sort of meaningless, until we corrected that problem.

Fred directed me on how to remove the alternator from the engine mount as he consumed a large run- & -tonic, and then he proceeded to dismantle it, expecting quite naturally, to find the "brushes worn" or some other common malady. Once disassembled, we(he) discovered that the brushes appeared fine, though there was a slight wobble in the shaft bearing.( Remember the raw water pump and its demise) and it became clear that repair was beyond his and/or my capabilities, at least with what we had at hand, which wasn't much, if anything at all.

We(he) decide that the best bet was Auto Zone for a new (rebuilt) alternator though he speculated that since it was an "AMPTECH" a name he had never heard of, there was a possibility that I (I) might have a small problem getting a replacement. When the Launch driver, Tom #2 pulled up along side, to take us back to the beach and pizza, I asked if he knew a place where my alternator problem could be dealt with. Without hesitation he said, "Captain Harley's!" Captain Harley's, supposedly, was a small shop in the basement of a house where in magic could be worked on all things electrical with a tie to the sea. No matter that it was cheek -by-jowl with a disreputable looking "garage", it was also next to the "Half Keg Bar," a saloon (calling that is an insult to saloons everywhere), which was created from one section of a Quonset Hut and has a "head" no one would set foot in unless they were looking for exotic microbes for an experiment of some kind. But from all indications, "Captain Harley" is the man and so Rich Webber and I drove up there( Ron Rienhart had a back up alternator. I had one too, but Ray sold it at a good price and for what he had done for me, who could fault him!). Unfortunately for us, but probably for the good mental health of him, Captain Harley is closed until Monday. Well, that's life in the big city. Thank Goodness, ABISHAG is "A SAILBOAT!"